WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Responding to Pope Francis’s suggestion that the Pope is not capable of judging gays, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia contacted the Vatican today to say that he would be “more than happy” to help the Pontiff do so.

“If he’s having trouble judging homosexuals, well, then I’m his man,” Scalia told reporters after making his offer. “I have over a quarter century of professional experience.”
Justice Scalia said that he was sympathetic to Pope Francis’s difficulty in judging gays, but added, “Once he spends a few weeks watching the master at work, I’m sure he’ll get the hang of it.”
“I wasn’t great at judging homosexuals my first year in the job, either,” he said. “But now I can do it without thinking.”

Justice Scalia said that once Pope Francis feels confident about his ability to judge gays, he would help the Pontiff learn how to judge minorities and women.

OA columnist Hal Crowther lives in Hillsborough, North Carolina, with his wife, the author Lee Smith.

"Klan Country, South Carolina" by Dennis Darling

Books discussed in this essay:
The New Mind of the South, by Tracy Thompson, Simon & Schuster.
In Love With Defeat: The Making of a Southern Liberal, by H. Brandt Ayers, NewSouth Books.

Since the dawn of introspection, which predates Homer at least, what collective mind has been more exhaustively or passionately psychoanalyzed than the Mind of the South? In the decades since W. J. Cash probed and disparaged it in his historic 1929 essay for The American Mercury, “The Mind of the South” has been revised and revisited by armies of Southern scribes and scholars, and still most of us are unconvinced that we’ve got it right. The Southerner’s tireless search for his identity has been viewed ironically by outside observers—no one has ever written about the “Mind of the Midwest”—and there is no Fellowship of Northern Writers who meet and drink and apply Freud’s tools to the works of Hawthorne or Melville. But I’m in no position to join the ironists; I devoted large sections of two books to this unique obsession, and have addressed it repeatedly in the pages of the Oxford American.

As a troubled South pursues its self—its soul—deep into the twenty-first century, there’s no better place to start than Cash, that doomed and prescient native of Gaffney, South Carolina, who is still remembered by Southern diehards as a traitor to his people. It’s significant that his original essay was published just before October 29, Black Tuesday, when the stock market crashed and launched the Great Depression, the national ordeal that distracted America from so many of the terrible things that happened in the Jim Crow South. Another significant footnote is that Cash’s editor at the Mercury was H. L. Mencken, whose notorious 1917 diatribe, “The Sahara of the Bozart,” argued persuasively and hilariously that the South possessed very little mind worth analyzing.

LONDON (The Borowitz Report)—Moments after approving a new law legalizing gay marriage in England and Wales, Queen Elizabeth II of Britain unleashed a blistering attack on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for “lacking the guts” to do the same.
The British monarch’s brutal evisceration of Gov. Christie stunned observers, who did not know that she was such a close follower of his gay marriage stance.
“I don’t like to badmouth people,” she said. “But I’m the head of a monarchy that began in the ninth century, and I’m apparently more modern than Chris Christie.”
After shocking observers with her opening salvo, she continued to tear Gov. Christie to shreds.
“Look, I know he has to appeal to the crazy right wingers in his party,” she added. “But the fact is, he’s not as forward-thinking as an eighty-seven-year-old lady who wears a crown on her head. It’s pathetic.”
Asked if she had advice for Gov. Christie, the British monarch said, bluntly, “Just sign the damn bill, Chris.”
Responding to a reporter’s question about the upcoming royal birth, Elizabeth replied, “Tell you the truth? I’m just glad the kid’s not being born in New Jersey.”

Agony, grief and a refusal to bend
By Leigh Sanders I am a native North Carolinian. I might have waited on you at Darryl’s on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh. We might have taken classes together at N.C. State. Or I might have processed your payroll, opened your bank account or sent you a fundraising letter through my various employments.
We might have bagged food at the shelter, picked up litter on the riverbanks or volunteered at the polls together. I might have taught your children in the public schools or you might know a recipient to the scholarship fund set up for North Carolina teachers in honor of my native Carolinian mother.
We might have been assigned the same project together at UNC-Greensboro while working on advanced degrees or I might have seen you on our family’s regular outings to the Bug Fest, Earth Day Celebration, Eno River Festival, First Night, Asheboro Zoo, Manteo Aquarium and the International Festival.
We might even be in the same yoga class or shop in the same local bookstores. Either way, I am your neighbor; we breathe from the same fresh pool of Carolina air.
I give here. I act when needed. I stay informed, and I do not miss elections. When I needed affordable health care, I found it from Planned Parenthood without seeking permission from you. I did not question why I did not have health care or was paid $2.15 hourly, well below a living wage, for nearly five years. I did not think it was unusual that I often had to work two jobs or seek out financial aid for my education or rent houses in less than safe neighborhoods. I was entirely trusting that my government was working on the side of justice and humanity for us all even when I did not agree with the process.
Never once did you require that I worship the same as you to prove my residential value. I was never denied a job, education, volunteer position or a loving relationship based on religion. So why have I spent five out of the past eight days at the legislature peacefully pleading religious amnesty from you? When did you decide that I was not a complete North Carolinian until I worshipped the “Lord” you spoke of in the chamber?
I agonize over the further economical devastation that will result from our rapid descent to the 10-worst states to live in for families. I shudder at our resemblance to states in our Union with representatives who have vowed to govern from the Old Testament, when the wonder of travel, the expansion of human life and the technological rapture remained the budding dreams of the bold and curious.
I grieve that my state will soon be running over with biblical poverty and sexual, racial and marital discrimination while you introduce legislation that could mandate me to pray alongside you. I mourn for a state where dinosaurs do not roam in school curriculums. I fear for all our children when reproductive health clinics are shut down and sex education is absent. I will be there when you have exhausted your remaining deceptive devices and watch you once again bow your head to your doppelganger and pass the ironically named Family, Faith and Freedom Protection Act.
But I will not worship a God who demands I cherry pick Scriptures to teach my children to fear difference, destroy love and dispose of women. I will not pray to wrath and domination.
But you have my attention, as I am sure you have the attention of the loving, generous God so many religious North Carolinians worship. And I am prepared just like Huckleberry Finn was when faced with religious persecution for refusing to return Jim to Christian slave owners because, after all, the Bible made it clear: “Slaves obey your earthly masters with respect and fear”– Ephesians 6:5.
He announced to God and country: “All right, then, I’ll go to hell.”